look who is 6 weeks old and just as sweet as can be:)

adalyn weighed in today at 11lb 8oz. she is a growing, healthy girl!!

she also smiled for the first time yesterday!! granted, it was at her aunt jenna (not me!!) and i didn't get a picture, but i DID witness it and it was the sweetest thing you ever saw:) she has smiled before in her sleep or gazing off in the distance, but this was the first time that she knew what she was doing! precious!! i love moments like that! we tried and tried to get her to do again, but she was holding out on us:) she also is sleeping 7-8 hours at night!! hallelujah!! i think these bags that i have had under my eyes for months now might be going away!!
josiah still loves kissing adalyn and gets tickled when her hand rubs across him or she grabs a hold of his finger. he LOVES it and squeals with delight:) this weekend he walked up to her, got in her face and with a sweet high pitched little voice, he said, "hey dair, my little sugarplum princess!" sweet.. but seriously, this kid NEEDS a brother:)

i was in the kitchen making supper when miley snuck up behind me. i didn't see her there, so i stepped on her foot when i turned to open up the fridge for something. i bent down and told her i was sorry but she scowled at me and with her arms crossed over her chest she said, "hey! you did that on perfess!!!" (purpose) so apparently forgiveness and graciousness aren't her strong suits! we're working on that!

ella kate was a bit grumpy this weekend. well, i guess i wouldn't say grumpy, but she was down and kinda complained a lot. she reminded me a lot like the donkey from winnie the pooh. i can not even try to spell his name but it sounds like "E-OR!" ha:) anywho... whenever she would complain about something or be negative towards her siblings, i would lovingly call her a "rain cloud". i really was trying to encourage her to be our happy little sunshine or my sweet little rainbow, but she was having a hard day and it was just too hard for her to be sweet! apparently her attitude rubbed off on her daddy. while i was bathing the babies, bill was trying to finish up supper and got a little stressed out with everything that was going on. ella kate and i were trying to make him laugh to cheer him up, but instead he got irritated with us and went back to the kitchen. ella kate looked at me and without skipping a beat, she said "daddy's a storm!!" bahahaha... i thought i was going to wet my pants:) she has great comedic timing.. and it went along perfect with our weather analogies!! daddy was a storm but as soon as he heard what she said, he couldn't help but laugh too!

tv, bubbles and sweet faces:o)

have you ever been in the other room when you hear one of your kids screaming? well, it seems as though at least one of my kids cries or screams every hour.. uh, i mean everyday:) so when i heard josiah crying yesterday afternoon, i didn't rush to him and instead i waited for him to come to me. but... he never came. ella kate did and nervously shouted, "momma! come here!! josiah has a tv stuck around his head!!"

what in the world?? i stopped folding the clothes on my bed and went into his room and found this.... the "tv" was actually just an extra monitor for the portable dvd player that we used to have in the car. i don't know where josiah found it or what possessed him to strap it around his head, but once i got it off, all was well with the world:)

until "miss thing" wanted to wear the "tv" as a belt and have her picture taken, too! we have so many bubbles at our house right now, so while bill was doing yard work last night, the babies and i blew bubbles and decorated our front porch with sidewalk chalk.
i could look at this sweet squishy face all day:)these are miley's first braids, so i took a pic:)movie night watching the veggie tales estheri love how newborns make this face:) ella kate told me, "momma, i think adalyn grace is trying to whistle! but... i don't here anything!" :)

oh, and did i ever metion that when adalyn was 5 days old, ella kate asked me when our 'other' baby was going to come out of my belly because my belly was STILL SO BIG!! sweet, huh?? time to put away the girl scout cookies and start doing some cruches:)

ever had one of those days??

woke up to a hungry adalyn.. looked at the clock: 6am. yay! she slept through the night again. i've missed her and get excited to go and see her:) i stumble into her room to feed her. pick her up and kiss her sweet, grunty little self and settle into the glider. while i am rocking her, i look at her and am just SO thankful. i love this baby. i love ALL of my babies.. what blessings they are. i burp her, change her diaper and lay her back down. walk into my bathroom and took a glance at myself and see that one of my eyes is really red.. almost bloodshot. could it be pink eye? it doesn't itch or hurt, so i crawl back into bed. what seems like minutes later, bill wakes up and showers, then kisses me goodbye. the other babies are still sleeping so i get up and start getting myself ready. my eye is looking less red and more pink... still no other symptoms.

by this time, josiah and ella kate are awake and playing in their room. i go downstairs and lay out their clothes for them to wear. i go into the kitchen to fix them something to drink. while i open the fridge, i realize that i forgot to make their lunches for mother's day out last night. ((sigh)) i stand in the doorway of the refrigerator hoping that something will pop out at me and asked to be packed in ella kate's lunch. she still needs to eat "soft" foods and we are running out of options.... and she is getting tired of eating the same things everyday. i throw a few things together and go to put them in the proper lunch boxes, but i can't find miley's lunch box anywhere. i look and look and then see the clock and realize that she will just have to have her lunch in a gallon size ziplock baggie.

i get miley up and change her. she doesn't want to wear what i picked out, but it will have to do. we are running late. it is time for me to wake up adalyn and feed her again. half an hour and 2 changes of clothes later (for myself and the baby), we are finished. she always seems to spit up at the most convenient times:)

i call my big girls upstairs to fix their hair, then we all head out the door to school. jos sees a cicada and freaks out. then miley freaks out and ella kate wants to freak out. i tell them to run fast and don't look down. the first one to the van is the winner! jos wins but is still crying over the dumb bug. after 2 threats and a pop on the leg (for miley) we are all buckled in our seats and driving down the road. i remember that i didn't give ella kate her pain medicine (for her tonsils) this morning, nor do i have it for school so we turn back around to the house so i can get it. school is about 20-25 minutes away and we are already pushing it. oh well, they can start without us. medicine is given, more tears were shed (ek HATES that stuff!), passy was put back into the baby's mouth and we were on the road, yet again. ella kate is telling me how she is so hungry, then it dawns on me that i NEVER FED THEM BREAKFAST!! what kind of mom am i?? granted i had a baby a few weeks ago, and i am still trying to get the hang of getting 4 little ones dressed and ready, nurse the baby and get myself presentable all so we can leave the house by 9am.... but STILL... i have to feed my kids!! i keep driving... no way am i about to turn the car around again, so i start thinking of cheap, soft and non-messy breakfast foods that they can all eat and can be found through a drive-thru. i pull into duncan donuts and get them some munchkins. they are LOVING it:) what a treat... on a school day!

we manage to catch every red light in town, but arrive at school only 8 minutes late! we all unload with 3 little book bags, 2 lunch boxes, a gallon size ziplock baggie:), medicine and a huge hospital cup full of gatorade. as we go inside i see other little kids in their pj's. oh no... today was miley's pajama party and i totally forgot:( oh well, maybe she wont notice that she is the only one in her class wearing normal clothes. i walk her to her class then see another cute little kid in her pj's with her show and tell item. ((sigh)) it was also show and tell today and i didn't bring anything for miley:( by this time i feeling like the world's worst mom... miley only has school 2 days a week... you'd think i would be able to remember this stuff! but no.. i can't. she walks into her class and starts bossing a little boy around:) (that's my girl!!) i walk jos to his class, while ek walks down to hers. after i kiss jos bye, i walk down to ek's class to kiss her good bye. i tell her teachers that her pain medicine makes her act a little off.... so to be forewarned:) my mom works at the preschool and she is the one who gives ella kate her meds. i am supposed to remind her and tell her the time to give them today, but guess what.... I FORGOT! i didn't realize it until i was driving down the road, so i call the office to ask them to tell my mom for me, but no one answered. so i texted ella kate's teacher and asked if she would relay the message (thanks mrs. tk!)

since i only had adalyn for the morning, i decided that a stroll around target and babies r us would be nice. i had a giftcard to spend, but nothing caught my eye. i figured a frappuccino from starbucks would brighten my mood, so after aimlessly walking around target, i got me a drink and headed back to the car. i put the drink on top of the van so i could put the baby in her carseat. i managed to keep her asleep while i buckled her back in, so i quietly got in the drivers seat and drove off. unwrapped my straw to put in my drink, but ((sigh)) i left it on top off the car when i drove off. i sickened me to think of letting $5 melt and waste away in the parking lot, so i turned the car around, wiped the asphalt and dirt off of my frappuccino that was laying in the middle of the parking lot, put my straw in it and went along my merry way.

i went to my sisters house to hang out and get some clothes for adalyn that her girls weren't going to wear. i plop myself on the couch and begin nursing adalyn when i get a call from ella kate's teacher saying that her mouth is hurting and she wants me to pick her up. i call bill and see if he could leave work and get her for me, b/c i have to feed the baby. he doesn't answer, so i tell her sweet teacher that i will come as soon as i get done. a few minutes later, i get a text saying that ek is feeling better and now wants to stay until carline:) thank you jesus!!

((sigh)) ... and it is only 11am!

batman and drama queen..

do you see this cute thing right here??? this is my neice, eve. she and miley are 8 weeks apart and i can already tell that they are going to be trouble when they get older. eve has taught miley a few things and one of them happens to be the word - never. you see.. eve LOVES barbie movies and i have heard her quote a few lines from them.. so i am not sure if she learned this from barbie or what.... but my sassy pants miley loves to say it. just this week, she and josiah were watching tv when miley turns the tv off. josiah said, "hey! miley turn it back on! i was watchin' that!" miley cuts her eyes at her brother and says, "nevahhhhh!" (never) thanks eve:) josiah found this batman costume which was handed down to us from a friend and is entirely too small. (as you can see) but jos loves to wear it and he loves to look behind him as he is running and watch his cape fly through the wind.
however, the poor little guy isn't the most coordinated superhero. while he is looking behind him at his cape, he has managed to run smack into the fire place, trip over some dancing shoes, take out his little sister and plow into the arm of the couch.:)this is what i got when i asked miley to smile for me..lovely.
hey, you win some. you lose some.

no more tonsils..

ellakate had her tonsils taken out thursday morning. she was super excited to wake up when it was "still night time!" we had to be at the hospital at 6am and poppa was there to greet us with this HUGE stuffed doggy that ek named bella.. then she renamed her the next day to annabell:)she LOVES to have straight hair, so i told her that i would straighten it for her surgery. could you imagine that curly hot mess after a couple days in a hospital bed? she was so excited about her surgery... bella was even allowed to stay in the bed and have her tonsils taken out too! they gave her some medicine to calm her nerves before they wheeled her to surgery, and her reaction to it was HILARIOUS! my dad, bill and i were dying laughing at her... my dad even said she was as drunk as a skunk:) she couldn't hold her head up, so she bobbing all over the place and her eyes were so glossy. one time she fell back onto her pillow and my dad kissed her on the head and asked, "are you feeling ok?" her reply"...... (long silence)..... yep!" i about wet my pants:) so funny! the nurses came and got her and wheeled her into surgery and it broke my heart. i started crying. she was fine.. didn't have a clue where she was or what was going on... but, i was scared. we love her dr. he was the nicest man and is so good with kids. he also is a believer and that made me love him even more.
she came out of surgery crying and asking for poppa (who had already gone back to work). it broke my heart. i think she cried for about an hour and at one point she looked at me and said, "momma, i wish we never would have come here!" i felt like the worst mom ever! but her tonsils needed to come out and i knew she would eventually feel so much better.she was a such a champ through all of this and we could not have been more proud! within the first few hours, she ate 2 popsicles, a couple cups of icecream and some jello. later that night she had some more and even managed to sneak a french fry of off her daddy's plate when no one was looking:)

the worst part of this experience for ella kate was her iv and the blood pressure cuff!

but, hey...i don't blame her! :(she NEEDED to hold adalyn to make her feel better:) she kept saying, "momma... i feel bad. can i hold the baby?"
poor adalyn... she is loved to death:)it made my heart smile to see all of our family and friends come and visit ella kate in the hospital. she had so many visitors and even more presents!! she was in heaven:) josiah even told me, "momma, when i get big like L-Kate, i'mma have tonsils and i'mma get prizes!!!" she racked up on stuffed animals, coloring books, candy, movies, fingernail polish, barbies, bubbles, balloons, pictures that her friends colored for her... you name it, she got it:) we are so thankful for all of the prayers and love! God is good!!

miney moe..

miley is hilarious... she really is!! she makes us laugh all day long:) i love how she calls herself "miney". i also love how she answers to "grandma!" when ek and jos are playing house, ek is always the mom and jos is the dad, which leaves miley being the grandma and she LOVES it!! she also loves to eat... and i love how everything that she eats is "nummy!" (yummy) she wants to eat "o-gurt" (yogurt) and "straw-bees" (strawberries) everyday, and has followed in her big sisters foot steps when it comes to ONLY wearing dresses and flashy shoes:) she is girly, however, she is my bravest when it comes to bugs. just this week, she had to stomp on an ant that was terrorizing her brother! ha:) she loves her thumb and loves her siblings... especially "alwyn gwathe" (adalyn grace). she can cut her eyes at you and give you mischievous looks all day long and she LOVES to sing and dance. she would be a great cast member on barney, with the cheesy way that she sings and shakes her head... not to mention all of the facial expressions:) i love to hear her pray and ask for the blessing at meal times. right now, she prays everytime for "momma peel butter" (momma to feel better)... makes my heart smile:) even though i am feeling great these days! i am so thankful for my sweet and spunky miley noel!

we love our "miney moe!"

bits and pieces!

happy easter! you know i had to be all matchy-matchy! :) funny story: bill was cutting josiah's hair and in the process, he gave him a mohawk. josiah wasn't a big fan of it when he looked in the mirror. he told bill, "daddy, i'm ready to be josiah again!" bill told him that he was josiah and his response was, "no i'm not, i'm alfalfa!!" ha!! we recently watched the little rascals:)

i'm not sure why this picture is messed up, but ella kate is the biggest "helper" with adalyn and to be honest, it freaks me out a little!! don't worry though, bill was right next to ek with his hands under the baby:)

check out these bad boys!! pray for ella kate this week! she is having her tonsils removed on thursday and will be staying in the hospital overnight. bill will be staying with her, since i am nursing adalyn every 3 hours, so also pray for me and my hormonal self!! i really want to be with my baby during her surgery, so pray that i can juggle everything and everyone!!

i could watch my sweet adalyn grace sleep all day long!! what a doll! she makes me want 10 more babies!! ha!! no... really, she does:)

what a joy she has been!! we all loves her to pieces and have to fight for our turn to hold her and kiss her!!

and lastly, i will leave you with this sweet moment! it will melt your heart!! i have rocked all of my babies and sang "you are my sunshine" to each of them since they were born. now, they all sing it to adalyn and i got this sweet video of miley singing to her baby sister:) LOVE!!

adalyn's birth story

our sweet 4th born is already 3 weeks old and i want to make sure that i recorded all of the details of her birth day! what a sweet and special day it was!! some of the best days of my life are the births of my babies!! i would GLADLY re-live each and everyone of them again.. well, maybe not ella kate's, her's was quite painful.... and super long, but still just as sweet and special! the days that led up to adalyn's birth were hard. i have something that my dr calls "irritable uterus", and basically i contract like i am in labor, but nothing else happens. no dilation, no nothing.... just hard contractions every 2-3 minutes. we live close enough to the hospital, that we would just drive up there and get checked to make sure it wasn't labor, then be sent back home. however, one night they kept me over night thinking it was the real deal, but in the morning my contractions slowed down and they sent me home. talk about a major bummer... i think i cried more that day than i had in a long time. i guess thinking that i was so close to meeting my sweet baby, then having it prolonged further was just hard. so you can imagine my hesitation when friday night (march 18) rolled around and i was contracting every 3 minutes. i really didn't want to have our baby at home, so while bill was getting ready for bed i told him that i would just drive down to the hospital and get checked by myself. that would be easier than trying to find a sitter to come to the house last minute while ek, jos and miley sleep. especially since the chance of them sending me right back home was great. so i checked in the the triage and they got me all hooked up. after 30 minutes of monitoring me and seeing my contractions, they called the dr. i was only dilated 1cm, but the on-call dr wanted me to stay overnight again just in case. i told them that i would REALLY prefer going back home. my hormones couldn't take another let down of staying the night just to be sent home the next morning, but the nurse really expressed how much they wanted me to stay. even though we live really close, i told them that if they monitored me for another hour and i show some progression, then i would stay, but if not then i really would prefer to go back home. they agreed. so another hour went by with steady, hard contractions every 2-3 minutes. and when they checked me this time, i was dilated "one and a wiggle". i had changed... even though it was a small amount. they were ready to admit me, but i asked if i could call my husband first and see what he thought. after all, i was here at the hospital alone and without any overnight bags. bill and i were basically on the same page about not wanting to stay overnight, but for some reason i felt good about staying now. i told him that i would be fine to stay by myself, and that i would call him 1st thing in the morning when we knew something. so they wheel me to labor and delivery and start my iv - which is BY FAR the WORST part of the delivery!! i hate those things. they give me something to help me sleep through the contractions, and i try my best to get some rest. i wake up to the nurse coming in my room with a huge smile saying, "this is it! you are having a baby today!" my contractions were still going strong and i had dilated more, so they wanted to go ahead and start me on pitocin. however, with this being my 4th baby, they were concerned that the baby would be here fast, and they didn't want to start anything until i had someone with me. so i call bill and make arrangements for our 3 babies at home. by 9am, the nurse comes in and tells me that the anesthesiologist is here and can administer my epidural now if i want him to. although, i wasn't uncomfortable yet, i figured why wait?? so he came in and after inserting twice in 2 different spots, i was good to go! those things are amazing:) the hours passed and i was showing little progression... around 11am, the dr came in a broke my water in hopes that it would speed things up a bit and we could have a baby by early afternoon. however, early afternoon came and went and still no baby. i was feeling great though. no pain whatsoever, and i was able to get in a few catnaps:) around 6pm my family(and jenna) had all left to go home and get some supper. we told them that we would call if anything exciting happened. and wouldn't you know that about a half hour after everyone left, we went from being 6cm to 10cm. i could feel all kinds of pressure and knew that it was time:) we called everyone to come back to the hospital and that the baby would be here SOON! by that time i was starting to feel some pain in my stomach. i was still numb in all the important areas, but i felt some serious pain in my belly during each contraction. it felt like someone had their fingernails and was scratching and ripping the insides of my stomach every time i would contract. to make things worse, was that during this pain, the nurses were switching over from day shift to night shift and we no longer would have the nurse that we had gotten to know so well throughout the day. we had paged the nurses desk to ask for something for this pain, but it took a while for anyone to come in. finally another anesthesiologist came in to help ease some of the pain and by that time, jenna and my parents were here. the medicine was almost immediate and in a matter of seconds i was laughing and smiling again! praise the lord!! the dr came in and broke down the bed and turned on all of the lights to get ready for the delivery. my sister lauren was at home keeping all of our other babies and we were still waiting on erin to get back to the hospital. she, jenna and bill's mom were with us all day long and all left at about the same time to take a break. although nan couldn't make it back that night for the delivery, we knew that erin was frantically trying to make it back in time and we didn't want her to miss it! i had just started to push when we hear a knock on our door and a familiar voice say, "hey! it's erin!" she ran into the room and behind the dr. who was already in position, grabbed the video camera and could not have made better time! i only pushed 4 times, and at 8:12pm adalyn grace was born! all 7lb 2oz 19 3/4in long of perfection:) we were 37 weeks and 5 days!

catching my breath:)

our life is crazy these days, but it is also SO much fun:) we could not have dreamed of a smoother transition with our sweet 4th baby! sure, i am pooped and could pass out at any given moment, but our hearts are so full of love for this precious angel:) when i look at my sweet family, i am overwhelmed by god's goodness!!! thank you jesus for these sweet blessings! adalyn is 2 weeks old and today at her 2 week check up, she weighed 8lb 3oz!! piggy piggy:) josiah will kill me for this one day, but this is an every day (or what seems like an every hour) occurrence here at the davis house:) taking care of business while playing on daddy's "hi-pot" (ipod)

speaking of blessings... this man is amazing:) having 4 babies ages 4 and under would be a LOT harder if he weren't such an incredible daddy and hubby! he has totally taken over every responsibility that he can with ek, jos and miley so that i can heal, rest, recover, nurse and bond with adalyn. what a man!!!

sweet hiney:)

we had to take a pic of this!! in the time that it takes for me to nurse the baby, my big 3 can do this to a clean and spotless room.... and it just so happened that my hormones were still raging at this point, so i cried! but my sweet hubby had them clean everything spic and span again:)

this swing has gone through all 4 of my babies... it works wonders for nap time:)

bright eyes:)

squishy face:o) i LOVE her juicy lips!

at the park!! everyone had turns on the monkey bars!

adalyn grace opted out of the monkey bars and chose to sit on the bench with me:)

monkey see, monkey do! it is hard to believe that adalyn will be tagging along with them in no time!

just a skippin' ....

2 of my beautiful girls:)

my handsome boys!

weeeeee........

going for a walk:)

i need to bullet point some funny things before i forget:

*josiah is completely and i mean COMPLETELY terrified of bees or any other flying insect. and i am talking shaking, crying and frozen in fear!! my mother in law recently bought us a trampoline for our back yard and the babies LOVE it, but josiah has recently opted out of jumping and preferred staying inside by himself to avoid any bees that might have been outside.

*when i was in my last few weeks of my pregnancy, the "nesting" was in full force! for some odd reason i felt like the bath mats in our bathroom needed to be clean before the baby came. so i washed them and happily laid them back on our floor all clean and fluffy. however, the first time the babies came in to use the restroom i made them walk around the mats, so they wouldn't get all matted and flat. ella kate was such a helper with my neurotic cleaning. one afternoon josiah was peeing and ella kate walked by and saw him standing on the mat, so she hollered, " 'siah!!!! get off the rug!! you're not supposed to step on it!!!" he got scared and was trying to spread his legs and straddle the mat while peeing and it was QUITE hilarious:) she got onto bill several times about standing on the rugs, too! but, he just ignored her.... oh well, at least she tried:)

*my kids love to pretend play and their latest obsession is playing show and tell! (thanks erin!!) they are so cute to watch! each one runs to their room and gets something to share and they all meet back in the living room and sit in a circle. miley makes me laugh when she goes first: "good moanin' eddie-body! i'm miney and dis is a ________!" then she shows off whatever toy or stuffed animal that she has chosen to share with her siblings:) i love that miney!!

*at the park last night, there was a lady running laps on the track. as soon as josiah saw her he said, "hey wook daddy! that girl is playing chase!"

*ella kate was watching a remake of the snow white movie with bill when she looked at him and said, "daddy, i think snow white has jesus in her heart." he looked at her said, "oh really? why?" then she said, "because she kept saying 'my lord' when she was talking to the king!"

*i think it is adorable that my girls associate every animal/creature with having a family. they try to encourage josiah when he is freaking out about a bee by saying, "it's ok 'siah! that bee's not going to hurt you! he's just looking for his momma!" or when they hear a dog howling, he is howling because he can't find his family.:)